“In retrospect, it’s easy to dismiss the Germs as the epitome of LA’s early identipunk scene. Singer Darby Crash was a barking spiky-haired brat, an alarming adolescent combination of Johnny Rotten’s snarling vocal ferocity and Sid Vicious’ self-destructive cool. Three years after the band’s first live performance (at the Whisky in 1977), Crash died of a drug overdose, reportedly self-inflicted in morbid tribute to Vicious’ own fatal OD in 1979.”
/ From The Trouser Press Record Guide, 1985 /
Died 45 years ago today: feral frontman of Los Angeles punk band the Germs, Darby Crash (aka Bobby Pyn, real name: Jan Paul Beahm, 26 September 1958 - 7 December 1980). “He was Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious rolled into one, a befuddled punk prophet with a brilliant mind,” Chris Campion writes in “Darby Crash: Saint Anger” in the October 2014 edition of Dazed Digital. “Darby Crash presided over the birth of the LA punk scene in 1977 and signaled its demise with his own self-inflicted death three years later. His was a vision of chaos that would never come to pass but left in its wake a legacy of destruction and one fiery punk classic, the Germs' 1979 Joan Jett-produced album, G.I.” Swallow a fistful of ‘ludes, give yourself a Mohawk, smear yourself in peanut butter and blast “Forming”, “Lexicon Devil” or “Media Blitz” LOUD today in Crash’s memory!
